DAY NINETY ONE

Why is Adelle so popular? Dopamine! Same with someone i used to know!

Science proves that women no longer need to play dumb to earn their M.R.S.! such a weird article given the educational achievements of the women i've known throughout my life.

CSM provides comprehensive health insurance to its employees. It's an awesome newspaper, so good on them. Sad that Catholic employers are up in arms about providing comprehensive health insurance covering contraceptions for their employees.

liz's mom is adorable.

which reminds me: my dad needs to update his blog more regularly. But if you have a second, read the politics page, which is a bit out of date (updates! updates!):

Everyone knocks W. I have to say that he must have something going for him, since he has been elected at least once.

The Atlantic covers an issue which had been previously explored by RadioLab. Super interesting: the parasites that are within cat feces (the reason that pregnant women aren't supposed to change cat litter) could possibly affect human brains. The reason? They affect rat brains, making rats no longer afraid of the smell of cats - and actually attracted to cat urine - the parasites can only reproduce in cat guts. It may go a bit crazy in people, affecting our brains unintentionally, given that it really just wants to make rats like cats. It's associated with higher rates of schizophrenia, slower reaction times in humans (particularly car accidents), and other reactions - maybe even an attraction to cats, which would be a bit more intentional. Listen and read.

DAY NINETY

OH MY GOD IT'S BEEN NINETY DAYS!!

did you know that cats have way better vision than humans in the dark, pretty sure? I bet a lot of you knew that. What you didn't know was that this trait apparently also carries over to humans that carry the Cat name - like Cat Power, who I saw last night. Seeing better in the dark than normal humans, she stayed *only* in the shadows and as soon as light hit her, she moved back into the shadows. Until in an interesting twist, she played the drums (poorly) while being fully lit up.

Have you breaded your cat lately?

As all the loyal readers here know, today is Istanbul Prom. i welcome your entry into the dance off, limbo off, or prom royalty competition!

well i just had a fun excursion to the Turkish social security offices as part of an effort to get me Turkish national healthcare. Fun facts: the walls at the SGK office in Gumussuyu/Cihangir are shoaled up with sandbags and the bottom half of the building is deserted. The walls at the SGK office in Tunel are horrrrrrrrribly peeling and painted willy nilly different colors in a terribly impoverished way that's difficult to describe. Not surprisingly, both said different things about my required documents and steps to get health insurance. Also not surprisingly is that the outcome of it all is that I'm supposed to forge some documents and then repeat the process on monday. awesome!

DAY EIGHTY NINE

the days have grown so long that i've started transcribing stuff FOR FUN. at least, that's what i'm going to call it given that i can't believe people would work for so little.

clicks in english: serving a useful function. anyway!

i did a transcription today out of boredom. i did not agree with the politics espoused within. it was horrible. horrible!

DAY EIGHTY EIGHT POST FOUR

the days are getting longer and longer and longer and longer and longer

DAY EIGHTY EIGHT POST THREE

Rise and Shine Detroit! And with a shoutout to Go to Slows Bar BQ! Makes me miss the house in Corktown just two blocks away from the train station. And Habib! And the pronunciation of Livernois and Gratiot Ave. And I didn't know the Ste. Anne de Détroit was the second longest continually running Catholic church in the US! This article's way more chipper than yesterday's NYTimes!

DAY EIGHTY EIGHT POST TWO

also, can i say how sad it is that it's a company that's doing this cool stuff instead of like... NASA? :(

DAY EIGHTY EIGHT

those of you who are loyal readers - and i know there's a ton, word up to the odd latvian follower! - will realize that i messed up the numbering of my days. whoops. SO CLOSE TO NINETY!!!!!!

a vacuum sealed pack of love!

let's just pretend that i blogged about aeronautics engineers. i read about them so you don't have to. if you've got questions, i'll field them, but otherwise, way too boring to write about.

Using sorta-slave/severely underpaid labor to digitalize documents.

i never use reader any more after they stopped the sharing option. do others agree?

people say life's a journey, but i'm tired of wasting mine in transit.

hey! wait! there's actually one of the people i'm interested in in the news! back to aeronautics engineers:

the boards of canada video dayvan cowboy features three very cool videos: a free fall from 19 miles up, a big wave surfer, and a clip from the film Chrystal Voyager. Each thing is as cool as the last - very, very cool. Joseph Kittinger's the dude who got me interested in all these back in the day scientists. He rode up 20 miles into the atmosphere and, wearing a specially designed suit and parachute and made to be in a sitting position, jumped out. As Wiki so helpfully summarizes:

He set historical numbers for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest drogue-fall (four minutes), and fastest speed by a human being through the atmosphere.

How cool is that?! He fell over four minutes straight and if you watch the video you'll see how incredibly far up he is - over four times higher than planes go. He reached speeds of over 600 mph!! Something malfunctioned in his suit and he passed out and his hand swelled to twice the normal size! Crazy!
And, he's training Felix Baumgartner, who's also done some REALLY cool stuff and - like in Human Target - is a specialist in small space targetted landings. Unlike the show, though, he's a real person, and also holds a bunch of records for BASE jumping and parachuting and all sorts of cool things. Felix is going to break the sound barrier without being encased by any sort of vehicle! the last and only thing to say is that the article doesn't mention that the reason for the delay is not for the years of preparation but instead because of some Red Bull lawsuit.